


Restoration

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Challenge: Sentinel Thursday, Community: sentinel_thurs, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-13
Updated: 2011-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-18 00:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim goes looking for someone he's lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restoration

**Author's Note:**

> This story was partly inspired by [Helvetica's vid, Lost](http://helvetica4ever.livejournal.com/12761.html), and by the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'restoration'.

Jim's hands were damp again, and he released one from its grip on the steering wheel and wiped it on his pants, then the other. The sweat on his hands, he could wipe away. The insistent voice yammering in his head that he was doing this all wrong, that he was sabotaging himself before he'd even started, he ignored, along with the tight knot in his gut.

He turned a corner, nearly at the address that Joel had given him, before movement caught his eyes. A familiar car moved off ahead of him, and Jim laughed, grunts of sour amusement that he eventually choked back. He'd been driving a while now, why not a little longer? He knew what that car looked like, knew the shades of its green under any light, but he also threw his hearing open, listening for the specific sound of the engine. He didn't want to be right behind it even as he followed it. Blair knew Jim's truck pretty well, too.

"Nothing stalkery here, is there, Jimmy?" he said out loud, changing down at a set of lights, before they turned green and he set off once more on the trail of his quarry. He pressed his lips together, sealing in words - and thoughts. He had words he was saving for later, and he hoped that they wouldn't sound as worthless and tawdry when he spoke them as they did in his head.

Blair drove to, of all places, a mall. Jim hid himself in the levels of the parking building and sat in his truck for a moment, looking at his hands. He'd been a soldier, and now he was a cop with a hard-ass reputation, and he contemplated the small, scared void that was apparently centred inside his chest and tried to summon some courage out of contempt. Then he took a deep breath and stepped out of the truck, and walked across the concrete floor and into the elevator.

The noise of people, the echo of footsteps and chatter, built like the sound of a tide that broke over Jim as the elevator doors opened. It was bright, light gleaming off shiny surfaces and shiny toys, as people surged back and forth in search of whatever they were seeking. Jim almost quailed. How did he expect to find Blair, and what the hell could he say to him in the midst of this sea of people? But he took a resolute step anyway and then another, his sight sharp and focused for the plaid wool jacket that he'd glimpsed stretched across Blair's shoulders, for the dark gloss of Blair's hair.

He stopped at a balcony, looking down into the central floor space that housed a food court. Noise and smells rose with dizzying force, but there - there was Blair, carrying a plate of food back from a tiny booth that advertised Thai food, settling himself down at a small table. He was alone, and clearly he expected that. There was no sign of expectation, no anticipatory glances, nothing except an abstracted attention to his meal. There was still food left on the plate when Blair pushed it away, and leaned his chin in his hand. The angle was wrong to tell Jim whether Blair was staring at the people around him or simply staring into the inside of his head.

He looked the same. He hadn't cut his hair. Jim recognised all the items of clothing that Blair wore; but he didn't recognise this lethargic, lazy stillness that seemed to find the mall and its surroundings as boring as faded wallpaper. The Blair Sandburg that Jim remembered best had things to do, always, and in between doing them he regarded the world with the bright-eyed, cunning glance of an urban creature on the prowl for the main chance. That made Jim smile, imagining a somehow Blair-like raccoon industriously hunting after this fact, and that fact.

And that was the point where Blair looked up, and saw Jim and, for one moment, smiled back.

Exultation flared in Jim's chest, for as long as it took for the smile to fade to a blankness that Jim wasn't used to seeing on Blair's mobile face. Blair stood, jerkily shoving his chair back across the tiled floor. His head was down and his shoulders hunched inside his jacket as he walked out of Jim's sight into the mall beyond the food court. Jim leaned against the railing, his head bowed, and ironically congratulated himself. Once again, Jim Ellison had bulled his way through a course of action that he _knew_ wasn't going to end well, and completely unsurprisingly, it hadn't ended well. But all his self-disgust couldn't quite chill the warmth of Blair's unstudied, spontaneous smile.

He pondered a moment. He could go stake out Blair's apartment, now that he'd made his grand stupid entrance. Blair would be ready for him, wary and guarded, but Jim was prepared for that and resigned to whatever came after. He turned and walked past the stores and their goods, past the fashionable women, and the teenagers who were giggling or sullen by turn, and made his way to the parking levels.

Exiting the elevator, he stopped. He saw, or thought he saw, Blair at the far end of the level, but then he was lost behind a pillar. Jim swallowed. He'd had too many dreams like this - Blair with his back turned, Blair walking away. He figured that he was dreaming while waking, but then Blair reappeared in the open space, truly there, and Jim followed at a route march pace, determined this time to catch up, and change the dreams once. Just once.

"Sandburg!" he called.

Blair turned. His face wasn't welcoming, but he didn't look angry, either. He made a gesture, which took in the truck some three spaces ahead of him, and kept going until he reached it. Then he stopped, although he didn't turn. He must have been listening, though, or looking in the reflection of the windows, because when Jim had nearly reached him, he walked the few steps he need to be the other side of the truck. Message received, Chief, Jim thought.

"Hey. Jim. I saw you, and I figured that I'd go for a walk in the building, and if it was meant to be, well, it was meant to be, you know. I shot an arrow in the air, where it lands, etc etc. Or pushed an elevator button more precisely, but still. Eeny, meeny, minie mo. You know what I mean." Blair smiled, but it was nothing like that smile in the food court. This smile was made of plastic, the same way that kevlar was made of plastic. "So, are you doing anything else in this fair city besides stalking me?"

"No. I'm not doing anything else."

Blair shook his head at this, a familiar gesture. Jim Ellison is being a putz again, that movement declared.

"How'd you find me? Abusing the police database for private gain?"

Jim shrugged. "I'm under too much scrutiny these days to try that. Joel found you for me. He retired. Zeller was one PTSD moment too many, and Joel's building himself a private detection agency."

"Joel's okay?" Blair asked, real emotion showing its face behind the barricades.

"He's good. He says hello, says that he'd like to hear from you if you're not too pissed off with him."

Blair's gaze skittered away from Jim's. "Tell him I said hello, too."

Jim pushed a little. "You could always tell him yourself."

"To do that I'd have to be in Cascade, Jim, and why would I be there?" Blair stared at Jim now, challenging and angry. Still, it was honest emotion, just like the smile, and Jim felt justified, whatever happened after. He valued honest emotion from Blair, after dealing with the glib, practical, shut-down man who made his graceful exit from Cascade and Jim's life.

"You could come back - for a while anyway. I have something I need your help with."

"Uh-huh." The tone is sceptical. "I dunno, man. It's always awkward for exes to work together."

A quiet corner of a grey car park wasn't the place to say this, but Jim said it anyway. "I want to go public. With the sentinel thing."

He didn't _want_ to go public at all, but it was the only possible path that he could see ahead of him. What he did want this time was a planned campaign, instead of a suicide mission.

Blair's skin turned sickly pale, and Jim got more honest emotion; horror this time. "You bastard! I get my life on track!" Blair's hands clenched into fists. "I have a job and an apartment and you come along and want to just fuck it all up, for what? What fucking for?" He was shouting, and Jim took a few steps forward, only to watch Blair take the same number of steps back, keeping the truck between them.

"Because what happened wasn't right. It wasn't right, Chief. And I'm sorry that it took me so long to see that." He didn't know if Blair could hear him, because he didn't have enough breath and his throat was too tight. "I am so sorry, Blair."

He didn't think that Blair did hear him, because Blair looked like he was close to a panic attack. His eyes were huge and his breathing raspy, and Jim could hear his heart beating hard and fast. Fight or flight - the question was which one.

"I guess that Joel found out my address." The words came out in a thin voice that didn't really sound like Blair.

"Yeah."

"Seven o'clock tonight. Not one fucking moment earlier."

Jim nodded. "Okay."

Blair chose to walk around the back of the parking space behind the truck rather than pass by Jim. Jim watched him go, and watched him turn. They stared at each other across the empty space between them, both of them terrified, although Jim had one moment of certainty that Blair wanted that distance closed just as badly as he did. But the time wasn't right, and maybe it wouldn't be right for a long time. That, too, was going to need tactics and strategy, and this strained encounter was just the opening shot. Jim sat in his truck as his senses followed Blair in his trek to his own vehicle, unsure whether he was gathering intelligence or only torturing himself.

Blair got into his own car, slamming the door. His breath hitched, irregular and desperate, before it whooshed out. Jim could almost see it, Blair's pursed lips, the conscious concentration. "I am calm," Blair murmured. "I am calm" His voice strengthened. "And if I ever find out that you're perving on me right now, I will never forgive you, Jim."

A scalding blush burnt Jim's skin. He twisted the key in the ignition, and somehow managed to steer the truck out of the parking building, even though his arms were hollow and empty, papier mache moulds that had replaced his actual muscle and bone.

He'd begun. He just wished he knew exactly what he'd started.

>   
> _On the surface, the restoration of Professor Sandburg's professional and personal reputation after the 2000 press conference appears to be a quick and simple process. That surface appearance belies both the process carried out beforehand, and the events that followed, and this chapter will investigate that process._
> 
> From Luisa Mendez's abstract of 'David and Goliath: individual case studies in the management of professional media from 2000 to 2015', presented as her PhD defence, Rainier University, May 2025.


End file.
